In this text Diogenes quotes Dieuchidas as saying something about Pisistratus in relation to the Homeric poems, but what Dieuchidas really said is unknown, for a part has dropped out of the text. The text of Diogenes Laertius runs thus (Solon, i. 57): "He (Solon) decreed that the Homeric poems should be recited by rhapsodists [Greek text: ex hypobolaes]" (words of disputed sense), so that where the first reciter left off thence should begin his successor. It was rather Solon, then, than Pisistratus who brought Homer to light ([Greek text: ephotisen]), as Diogenes says in the Fifth Book of his _Megarica_. And _the lines_ were _especially these_: "They who held Athens," &c. (_Iliad_, II. 546-558), the passage on which the Athenians rested in their dispute with the Megarians. And _what_ "lines were especially these"? Mr. Leaf fills up the gap in the sense, after "Pisistratus" thus, "for it was he" (Solon) "who interpolated lines in the _Catalogue_, and not Pisistratus." He says: "The natural sense of the passage as it stands" (in Diogenes Laertius) "is this: It was not Peisistratos, as is generally supposed, but Solon _who collected the scattered Homer_ of _his_ day, for he it was who interpolated the lines in the _Catalogue of the Ships_".... But Diogenes neither says for himself nor quotes from Dieuchidas anything about "collecting the scattered Homer of his day." That Pisistratus did so is Mr. Leafs theory, but there is not a hint about anybody collecting anything in the Greek. Ritschl, indeed, conjecturally supplying the gap in the text of Diogenes, invented the words, "Who _collected_ the Homeric poems, and inserted some things to please the Athenians." But Mr. Leaf rejects that conjecture as "clearly wrong." Then why does he adopt, as "the natural sense of the passage," "it was not Peisistratos but Solon who _collected_ the scattered Homer of his day?" [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xviii.] The testimony of Dieuchidas, as far as we can see in the state of the text, "refers," as Mr. Monro says, "to the _interpolation_ that has just been mentioned, and need not extend further back." "Interpolation is a process that postulates a text in which the additional verses can be inserted," whereas, if I understand Mr. Leaf, the very first text, in his opinion, was that compiled by the editor for Pisistratus. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 400 410, especially pp. 408-409.] Mr. Leaf himself dismisses the story of the Athenian appeal to Homer for proof of their claim as "a fiction." If, so, it does not appear that ancient commentaries on a fiction are of any value as proof that Pisistratus produced the earliest edition of the _Iliad_. [Footnote: Mr. Leaf adds that, except in one disputed line (_Iliad_, II. 558) Aias "is not, in the _Iliad_, encamped next the Athenians." His proofs of this odd oversight of the fraudulent interpolator, who should have altered the line, are _Iliad_, IV. 327 ff, and XII. 681 ff.